The Branch Will Not Break. James Wright A.

THE BRANCH WILL NOT BREAK

      AS I STEP OVER A PUDDLE AT THE END OF

      WINTER, I THINK OF AN ANCIENT

      CHINESE GOVERNOR

       And how can I, born in evil days And fresh from failure, ask a kindness of Fate?

      —Written A.D. 819

      Po Chu-i, balding old politician,

      What’s the use?

      I think of you,

      Uneasily entering the gorges of the Yang-Tze,

      When you were being towed up the rapids

      Toward some political job or other

      In the city of Chungshou.

      You made it, I guess,

      By dark.

      But it is 1960, it is almost spring again,

      And the tall rocks of Minneapolis

      Build me my own black twilight

      Of bamboo ropes and waters.

      Where is Yuan Chen, the friend you loved?

      Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness

      Of the Midwest? Where is Minneapolis? I can see nothing

      But the great terrible oak tree darkening with winter.

      Did you find the city of isolated men beyond mountains?

      Or have you been holding the end of a frayed rope

      For a thousand years?

      GOODBYE TO THE POETRY OF CALCIUM

      Dark cypresses— The world is uneasily happy: It will all be forgotten.

      —THEODOR STORM

      Mother of roots, you have not seeded

      The tall ashes of loneliness

      For me. Therefore,

      Now I go.

      If I knew the name,

      Your name, all trellises of vineyards and old fire

      Would quicken to shake terribly my

      Earth, mother of spiralling searches, terrible

      Fable of calcium, girl. I crept this afternoon

      In weeds once more,

      Casual, daydreaming you might not strike

      Me down. Mother of window sills and journeys,

      Hallower of scratching hands,

      The sight of my blind man makes me want to weep.

      Tiller of waves or whatever, woman or man,

      Mother of roots or father of diamonds,

      Look: I am nothing.

      I do not even have ashes to rub into my eyes.

      IN FEAR OF HARVESTS

      It has happened

      Before: nearby,

      The nostrils of slow horses

      Breathe evenly,

      And the brown bees drag their high garlands,

      Heavily,

      Toward hives of snow.

      THREE STANZAS FROM GOETHE

      That man standing there, who is he?

      His path lost in the thicket,

      Behind him the bushes

      Lash back together,

      The grass rises again,

      The waste devours him.

      Oh, who will heal the sufferings

      Of the man whose balm turned poison?

      Who drank nothing

      But hatred of men from love’s abundance?

      Once despised, now a despiser,

      He kills his own life,

      The precious secret.

      The self-seeker finds nothing.

      Oh Father of Love,

      If your psaltery holds one tone

      That his ear still might echo,